


Root

by smaychel



Category: One Piece
Genre: Knifeplay, M/M, Swords & Fencing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaychel/pseuds/smaychel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoro is fascinated by Sanji's skill with knives, and wants to experience it for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Root

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: contains knife play, consensual cutting, references to canonical violence

**Root**

 

There’s something unspeakable about the way Sanji holds a knife. Zoro can’t take his eyes off it. He watches him in the ship’s kitchen at dawn, when the light’s all silver and sharp and no one else is awake.

 

Sanji’s shirt is, unusually, untucked and billowing beneath a black waistcoat that skims his too-slender waist as Zoro’s hands would. Zoro leans against the far end of the wooden kitchen counter and stares as Sanji picks up a second knife, long and perfectly weighted, and holds it in his other hand, flourishing the two of them in a way that could almost be considered flirtatious before using them both simultaneously to slice ginger root so fine it looks like lace. He winks at Zoro.

 

It’s fucking _obscene_. Zoro’s holding his breath watching those long, steady fingers wrapped around the knife handles as if they were swords, the way the pale metal point of each blade dips into the flesh of the ginger, under its skin, the tang of it in the air. The knives come away with a wet sheen of ginger to them. Zoro wants to lick them clean, wants to lift Sanji’s hands to his mouth one at a time and run his tongue along the flat planes and precise cutting edges without tearing his eyes away from Sanji’s for a second.

 

He can’t _breathe_. His hands find the smooth grips of his katana automatically and it calms him, until he imagines Sanji’s filthy, beautiful hands on them, all over his swords like they were kitchen knives, and even the thought of it is so dirty, so intimate, that his hands tighten until he’s shaking.

 

“You like to watch, don’t you Zoro,” Sanji says with a smirk. He says it like he doesn’t mind. And of course he doesn’t, Zoro thinks, exhibitionist little fuck.

 

He envies Sanji this, if he’s honest. He’s fascinated by it, _dreams_ about it, about Sanji skinning fish with delicate, scalpel-thin blades. Such precision it makes his soul ache. If there’s one thing Zoro knows it’s power, his swords can slice open the ocean itself. If God existed, Zoro thinks, he could cut him clean in two. Leave him gaping. But the control, the ability to sting rather than entirely destroy, that’s another kind of power. He imagines the point of his sword at Sanji’s long white throat, imagines it kissing the skin, leaving it unmarked. But even in his mind Sanji’s skin parts like the pages of a book, and his blood wets the metal like ginger.

 

Zoro breathes. When he stands beside Luffy he feels like their power could bring the government to its knees, but what might happen after that terrifies him. No one can stop them, and one day he’s going to cut the whole god damn world in half.

 

He watches Sanji bite his lip in concentration as he swiftly slices the two points of the knives away from each other across the chopping board, cleanly bisecting a soft yellow starfruit. His mouth looks empty without a cigarette hanging from it.

 

“Did you want something, marimo?”

 

Zoro wants… he can barely put words to what he wants.

 

“I want you to cut me,” he says, and his voice feels rough in his throat.

 

Sanji lifts an elegant eyebrow. “You want me to fucking sauté you as well?”

 

“I’m serious.”

 

Sanji sighs, a put-upon sort of sigh, and rinses his knives in salt water.

 

“Why?”

 

“Why not? We get under each other’s skin in every other way.”

 

Sanji laughs bitterly, so Zoro steps closer, right into his personal space, and lays an arm across the surface beside him. It’s a movement that’s somewhere between intimate and threatening, but Sanji doesn’t back away. Doesn’t even stop smiling. This close the smell of ginger and star fruit is bright and pungent,  Zoro can almost taste it. “How about because I want you to, Love Cook?”

 

“No.”

 

“No?”

 

“My knives are for food, not for some shitty pervert samurai to fucking desecrate.” But Sanji’s still holding the two knives, so Zoro parts the buttonless charcoal grey fabric covering his own torso.

 

“Knives are for cutting,” Zoro says. Sanji is still motionless. Zoro can’t tear his eyes away from the two slips of silver in his hands. “Yours know what they want.” Zoro leans forward until the tip of one touches his bare chest. He can feel Sanji shaking, almost imperceptibly. “They’re calling out for it,” he breathes, low and dark. “I can hear them.”

 

He shifts a few scant centimetres to one side, a small, swift movement, dragging his chest across the blade’s tip, cutting himself on Sanji’s knife. A tiny bead of blood wells, drops. Sanji’s mouth falls open.

 

“No,” he says, and wrenches his knives away, lets them clatter to the chopping board. He grips the edge of the counter top and his knuckles are pale. His hair hangs over his eyes. “My knives are for food, Zoro. Not for this, do you understand me? Never for this.”

 

He speaks about his knives as if they’re sacred. It’s a beautiful response, something Zoro might say himself, if the situation were reversed. And maybe it’s that very fact that makes him think of it, makes him brush his fingers along the sleeve of Sanji’s shirt and so very lightly, with the barest touch of their fingers, lift Sanji’s hand to where his katana are slung low on his hip, murmuring into his ear.

 

“Use mine then.”

 

The ship sways gently beneath them. This close he can hear Sanji breathing, and would swear he can feel his fingertips against the handles of the swords. He feels light headed. No one’s allowed to touch his swords, _no one_. When Sanji’s hand closes around one of them, it’s the most intense moment he’s experienced since Mihawk cut him open. It’s beyond sex, beyond anything. He feels exposed, absolutely raw.

 

He knows, he swears he knows, without even looking, that it’s the cursed Kitetsu. He smiles from one corner of his mouth. That sword wants to do wicked things to pretty boys like Sanji. Zoro can tell.

 

Something groans deep in the heart of the ship, some waterlogged board stretching under its own weight. Zoro wishes he could see Sanji’s face. He can hear his breathing speed up, grow heavy, as he carefully unsheathes the sword in his hand, pulls back enough that they’re face to face with a blade’s length between them.

 

Sanji touches the tip to Zoro’s chest and it’s cold, razor sharp. “What do you want?”

 

“ _Cut me_ ,” he breathes.

 

Sanji drags the edge maddeningly lightly across Mihawk’s scar, left shoulder to right hip, one long pink line of damaged tissue. He doesn’t press hard enough to break the skin, but it feels like fire.

 

“Do it.” Zoro’s voice is ragged. He _wants_.

 

Sanji just smiles. “You’re a fucking psychopath, you know that?”

 

It’s the contrast between them. Where Zoro could cut a man in half easy as breathing, Sanji could skin him like a fish, gut him, scoop out his eyes and remove his bones one delicate piece at a time. It’s incredible.

 

Sanji sighs again, a little exasperated but there’s heat there too. “On the table, marimo. Now.”

 

And that’s how Zoro finds himself spread out on the low kitchen table like a cut of meat while Sanji stands over him with Zoro’s own katana. He’s aware of everything – the movement of the ship, his exposed throat as he tips his head back on the wood beneath him, the perfumed smell of star fruit and the horrendous, fathomless depth of ocean below them.

 

The sword traces Zoro’s clavicle. The metal seems to suck all the heat from his skin. It rests in the hollow at the base of his neck, still teasing, still lemon-sharp.

 

“Take a deep breath,” Sanji says calmly, his shoulders loose and his hand steady. “Let it out again slowly.”

 

And as Zoro exhales Sanji breaks the skin in one long, elegant line from his throat to the vee of his clothes where they open at his abdomen.

 

He closes his eyes and just _feels_ for a moment.

 

Sanji’s good, all that control - it’s a shallow cut, only just more than a scratch, but he can still feel the thin tracks of his own blood as it drips away across his torso. He senses every millimetre of his own skin. He feels lethargic, almost drunk with it. It’s like afterglow, sleepy and electric all at once.

 

Sanji’s voice is quiet, more restrained than Zoro’s ever heard it before. “How did you know?”

 

“Mm?”

 

“That I would know how.”

 

Zoro smirks and lazily rolls his head to one side, opening his eyes to look up at where Sanji stands beside him. “I know you.” He reaches out, touches the tip of his own sword. _I own you_. The scrape on his chest stings. It’s exquisite. _I’ve been under your skin_.

 

Sanji lifts the cursed sword in his hand until it points, menacingly close, at Zoro’s face. Zoro’s smile grows, and he sticks out his tongue and touches the sharp point his fingers have just brushed.

 

“Fucking monster,” Sanji murmurs.

 

Zoro doesn’t hear him. There’s a rushing in his ears like the ocean in a shell, or his own blood, singing.


End file.
